


Path

by JoAsakura



Series: The Dark Road [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Shepard leads, but will they all follow?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Path

**Author's Note:**

> more post-Control endings as I wait patiently to go home and download the extended cut. ^^;;; Sequel to Guide

It was the ghost of a memory of a ship, silver skin gleaming with reflected starlight as it slid through through the dust of a nebula. While the shadows that followed it were massive, solid things - the nightmares of countless races given form with their tentacles stretching out to feed as they travelled - the vanguard was far smaller, graceful and sharp - a bird of prey or the tip of an elegant spear.

The Gardeners were black shapes made of ancient tech and the biomass of a thousand thousand Harvests. The Guide was that same tech given life from pure biotics and the stuff of stars. It had taken a more than a century to grow, the first of it's kind, but perhaps, Harbinger thought as they watched, not the last.

The journey across the galaxy at sublight speeds, with no relays to speed them on their way, was a slow thing - but the former Gardeners had nothing but time. And with each light year they crept, their siblings joined them. From the smallest ships to the remaining capital-class ones, the dark caravan grew.

The Guide was taking them the long way, through the heart of the galaxy, skirting populated systems, giving them time to gather and feed. They would need all of their strength for the journey that lie ahead.

~~

Shipbodies gleamed with the faint rosy light of the nebula as they lingered, and Harbinger watched over them as the Guide scouted the nearby systems. Within their gestalt, he sat wearing the human face he'd grown accustomed to, in a room full of stars, the floor flickering with subtle rainbows.

Shepard's room, that small, temporary fiction made permanent, and private from the rest of the gestalt except for Harbinger.

It had changed over the centuries, grown, as the Guide had begun to process the vast data it had inherited from it's predecessor, but the small, smiling murals that Watcher had created still decorated the walls. The toys were long gone, (although Harbinger was certain Shepard kept the constructs hidden somewhere in the fractal spaces) replaced by frozen moments of the Small Ones that Shepard-The-Human had known.

(Harbinger had asked once, why the Guide kept them, and blue eyes like a sun had smiled at him. "So I never forget the promise we made to them." the Shepard had said, and only later, by review, had Harbinger realised that smile was sad.)

Nox , a destroyer-class barely bigger than the Guide itself, saw Shepard first and the joyful message spread throughout the fleet in moments. Nearby, Regent's shipbody curled it's fingers in a gesture of annoyance that Harbinger made careful note of.

The Shepard entered the room as the silver-white ship came alongside Harbinger, and he took it into his fingers, pulling it close. "I do not like it when you range so far from the fleet." He said, black-armoured hand pulling the Shepard close as well. "I worry you would make a target of yourself."

The child Harbinger had once sheltered within himself had grown, but still seemed so small in his arms. "It's been a long time for some of these worlds, but the ghosts of the Reapers still lives in their stories. Me? I'm just a light in the sky." the Shepard said as the star-filled room spread a map of the galaxy in front of them. "I found the relay I was looking for." he added.

Harbinger's gauntlets were dead black against the gleaming silver of the Shepard's armour. He found he liked the contrast, even with the red stripe that still burned down one arm. "A silent relay, so it survived the Change. A relay back to dark space." He said.

"A relay to dark space, but not *empty* space." the Shepard smiled faintly. "It's a jump point. There's another relay. Catalyst had plans to expand, and I can see the roads it had considered."

"And you're taking us there." Harbinger nodded approvingly. "A new Garden. One we will observe only. " He added.

"You swore an oath, Harbinger." Shepard didn't try to pull away, but fixed him with that burning stare. "But I worry that some of the fleet might miss the Harvests a little too much."

"You saw."

"I didn't have to. You're all a part of me." the Guide sighed, leaning into Harbinger's dark form. "I may have to kill Regent if they don't get on board with this."

"You're very persuasive. And ridiculously determined." Harbinger said dryly, shipbody fingers curling through silver curves and arches as he stroked the Shepard's face. "You'll bring them around before they can break oath."

"Harbinger." the Shepard said in that same tone he always used when presenting his companion with a difficult question. The greatest of the Gardeners had come to vaguely dread it.

"Yes?"

"Why do you still wear that face?" He wondered. It wasn't cruelly asked, and he reached up to rake his fingers through heavy, black curls. "I know you wore it to keep me at ease after I was born, but I would have thought by now you'd have gone back to your core-form."

"Does it bother you?" Harbinger asked back. "I know the importance it held for the human. It was never meant as an insult."

"I know. But he.. the one who wore it first... would have been a little disturbed by the association, I think." the Guide chuckled as he ran a gleaming thumb over thick brows, down the side of Harbinger's borrowed face to cup his cheek. "But I've grown used to seeing you with it, and you wear it... differently than he did." The chuckle died off with a small sound that melted against the Gardener's lips.

"You miss them. The Small Ones, long dead." He said when they separated. It wasn't a question, and the black of Harbinger's garments enclosed them both. The closeness, the intimacy, had been strange. After all, Gardeners had been denied everything but the Harvest.

But their new Guide had changed that. Slowly they were developing their own stories, a form of culture based on the memories of millions of forgotten races. And the closeness had become a part of them. Harbinger felt protective, possessive even, of it, and the Guide that had given them so much.

"I do." the Shepard tilted his head up, to look Harbinger in the clear brown eyes he wore. "But I know they survived. Thrived, even. After all, EDI had a little bit of us in her, so I have her memories here as well. It was the only gift I could give us all. To free us from the tyranny of the Cycles." He sighed, leaning his head against Harbinger's shoulder as he had done when he was small.

Such a strange human gesture that felt as natural now as the way the Shepard's shipbody fit against his own, Harbinger thought. So much in a few centuries had become natural that had not been in a billion years.

"I'm going to take us through the relay as soon as the stragglers from the traverse catch up." Shepard said. "Paladin and the others are only a few days out. We can feed here until then. It's going to be a hell of an adventure. You ready?"

"I once said I was the Harbinger of your perfection." he said with a strangely fond look. "I never knew until now how correct that statement was." One black finger stroked the length of the Shepard's shipbody, and the core form shuddered in their virtual embrace. "Once it was my burden to destroy you. Then, my duty to protect you. Now, it is my honour to follow you, my Guide, my Shepard."

"You have given us the greatest gift imaginable." Harbinger said, very quietly, as the Guide allowed the caresses, remembering whatever pleasures one tiny organic form had known. "You have given us hope."


End file.
